NFL's Image Will Take a Hit / The NFL's Timing Couldn't Be Worse

BRIAN BILLICK has had it with the media. The Baltimore Ravens' coach laid into the national press yesterday at the Super Bowl, wondering why everyone couldn't just concentrate on football and leave his star linebacker, Ray Lewis, alone.

Good idea in theory. But this is a bad week for anyone in the NFL to insist that we ignore what is going on off the field and concentrate on the game.

Yesterday, former Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth, once a first- round draft choice, was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years and 11 months in prison after being convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.

That's not to mention, playing defensive tackle for the Super Bowl Giants, Christian Peter, who had his own problems with assault. Peter was accused of raping a Nebraska student named Mary Redmond, 10 years ago. Peter pleaded guilty to "inappropriate touching," and the university paid Redmond $50,000.

Is it fair to include Lewis in that group? After all, he was charged with murder but only pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice after the brawl following last year's Super Bowl that left two men dead. The problem is, no one was convicted for those deaths.

So what are the families of the victims supposed to do, decline interviews because Billick says to keep quiet? The families are appearing on television shows and speaking to reporters this week, pleading their case, just as you would expect.

Does Lewis deserve a week of interview hell at the Super Bowl? Maybe not. But we've already tried this keep-quiet-and-it-will-disappear theory, and the results have been lousy.

For whatever reason, the slow wheels of justice rolled right up to Super Bowl week. Seeing a former first-round draft choice get a prison term of nearly 20 years is no way to market the biggest showcase game of the year. Neither is a sexual-assault trial for a tight end who was once the NFL spokesman for the United Way.

As several people have pointed out, when the NFL picked the slogan "Show Me Something," this was not what they had in mind.

Every year at the Super Bowl, the commissioner gives his "State of the NFL" message and then takes questions from hundreds of national reporters. Want to guess what the questions to Paul Tagliabue will be about this year? This is more than an unfortunate blip on the radar. The NFL, and professional sports, officially have a problem.

To his credit, Tagliabue has not pretended this is just a misunderstanding, and is not likely to do so this week.

"I do not think the issue is one of image," the commissioner said at the end of the regular season. "The issue is a substantive one of player conduct."

The question is, what should be done? It is likely that we will be hearing a lot about how professional teams should concentrate more on the "character" of the players they draft. That sounds like a terrific idea, until you hear more about the Chmura case.

A former altar boy, proud Republican, and active in charity causes, Chmura sounded like an advertisement for the modern athlete. He was a tough, Polish- Catholic kid from tiny Deerfield, Mass., who made it to the big time.

His arrest shocked everyone, although not so much that three of the Waukesha County corrections officers didn't get his autograph while he was in custody. This had to be a setup, they said in Packer country. Surely he will win this case.

And he may. The assault case boils down to Chmura's word against a then-17- year-old girl who used to baby-sit for his family. The jury may find it too hard to decide who is telling the truth and end up deadlocked.

But the facts that are not in dispute do not paint a pretty picture. Chmura,

married and the father of two, arriving at a post-prom party at a friend's house, drinking with under-age students, and jumping into the hot tub in his underwear with 17-year-old girls. The charge is that he lured the girl, who had been drinking, into the bathroom, where he undressed and sexually attacked her.

It may have been a shock to the people of Green Bay to hear that Chmura was such a party animal, but not Mary Redmond.

After the incident with Peter, Redmond helped found the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes. Redmond handles some 150 victims' cases a year and says she has compiled some scary statistics.

Redmond recently told a reporter her studies show that male athletes are six times more likely than other men to commit sexual assaults and 10 times more likely to commit domestic violence. The conviction rate of athletes who are prosecuted, Redmond says, is less than half the national rate for similar offenses.

If that's true, these aren't a few isolated cases or flukes. And it seems you can order up all the character tests you want and you still can't be sure what a person is like.

Instead, for a deterrent, we rely on the cold, harsh glare of public attention. It isn't pleasant, but it is all we have that seems to be working right now.